


Mortals in the Round

by TychoBrandt



Category: Geek Remix
Genre: Conspiracies, Crime Procedural, Ethics and the Lack Thereof
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 17:45:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8676886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TychoBrandt/pseuds/TychoBrandt
Summary: Before you could remember, we all walked quietly upon the feathers that fell from Heaven. I promise you that is true.But now? Listen. Our every step is a brittle roar as we walk upon the stage we made of their wingbones.





	

Stacy grits her teeth, nostrils flaring, turning the torsion wrench ever so slightly. It's nearly pitch black down here. She steadies her hands, breathes evenly, feels for the tiny vibrations within the heavy padlock. Fucking disc tumblers, what an irritatingly effective invention. She could just pry open the damn thing with her hatchet, of course--that'd be easy _and_ satisfying, after all this shadowing around--but, alas, now was the time to be discreet.

The concrete and steel begins to rumble and rattle around her. She freezes, eyes narrowing in the darkness.

Trains overhead. 

She continues. She rakes the pick back and forth, slowly. Surgically.

A click.

She exhales. Pulls the padlock free.

She carefully-- _carefully_ \--opens the innocuous reflective-hazard-orange toolbox, millimeter by millimeter, with the backspike of her hatchet. Satisfied, she pulls out an equally innocuous brown paper parcel. 

Stacy furrows her brow, raising the object to the dim light. _How very quaint._

\---

The war room is dark and silent. The only light glares from the countless massive monitors that populate the far wall of the room.

Well… it’s less of a war room, and more of a war cube. The walls and ceiling are covered in pyramidal black structures, rendering the room anechoic for both acoustics and electromagnetic waves. Conductors line the inside of the chamber, rendering it as a massive Faraday cage. Wires of every possible color--some glow in the dark, some glittered--flow to and from the huge server racks like transhuman hair. 

Nothing comes in. Nothing goes out.

Not without Mari's notice, anyway. Not a high chance in Hell.

She makes a sharp cutting motion with her left hand, and the security modernization schemata of Chicago Union Station snap to the leftmost taskbar of her leftmost monitor, automatically compressed and alphabetically stored. More dead space on her hard drive, but so be it. Could be of use later. At the very least, she could turn a profit selling it to the right person.

She leans back in her chair, steepling her fingers, humming thoughtfully to herself. Stacy cut comms fifty-nine minutes ago. Now, all Mari can do is wait. 

\---

Stacy's home. About damn time.

Mari stands up, crackling her spine as she does, and pushes open the secure door. She blinks for a moment in the sudden nova of sunlight, realizing that, yes, it's 10AM. Shit. At this time of day, walking through their apartment is like walking the surface of a star. All the glass and polished chrome (pretty sweet as it is) doesn’t help.

"Good morning to you too," Stacy says dryly, tossing her motorcycle helmet onto the living room coffee table and scattering its contents. Mari grimaces at the din.

"Oh, ha ha, funny, funny," Mari mutters, squinting out the wide windows at the gleaming river far below. "Fuckin' Wolf Point..."

"You could always get sunglasses." Stacy unzips and shrugs out of her riding jacket, letting it fall to the floor unceremoniously. "Mirror lenses. You'll look cool, and you'll remind me how _I_ look cool. Win-win." She unclasps and pulls at the straps of her concealed combat rig. Her hatchet and M1911, no longer snug against her ribs, fall easily into her hands.

"Or we could install those auto-dimming windows," Mari muses, tugging on a drawstring of her sweatshirt. Her eyes follow the traffic below, pupils constricted. "Spend enough on rent already, what's another fifty?"

"We should wait until they come in solar." Stacy clears the gun and lays it on the table. "Few more years."

"The windows?"

"Yeah. I mean, it'd cut rent if we could sell back--"

They both pause, looking down at the brown parcel Stacy has procured from her bag.

... It looks a lot less impressive in the clarity of sunlight.

“Oh, right.”

"... Well."

"Could be a bomb," Mari suggests.

"Whole lot of effort to blow us up."

"Could be a tracker."

Stacy reaches down into her jacket pocket and procures her portable signal jammer, waving it in Mari's face.

"Could be anthrax."

"Can we just _open_ it?"

"Fine, fine." Mari plucks the mystery parcel from Stacy's hand and smacks it flat on the coffee table (sending Stacy's pistol and helmet rolling), flicking open her knife and slicing easily through the paper.

Stacy arches an eyebrow. "No gasmask? Not even gloves?" There's a hint of amusement in her voice.

"Eh, we're in this deep. May as well go Mariana." 

And from the inscrutable depths of that unremarkable, wrinkled brown paper emerges...

A phone. A rather luxurious and modern Blackberry phone, to be precise, neatly perched on top of a stack of bills. 

"Our phantom client is certainly full of themselves." 

Mari brushes the phone aside, splitting the bills like cards over and over again as Ben Franklin peers up at her unamusedly. Unmarked, just like the first batch. She'll give them a pass under the microscope, just in case. "Yeah, or is new to the game." Leading payment before the job was generally a faux pas, the sign of a lack of trust. American banknotes are fine, convenient, but still traceable. Not nearly as good as Swiss francs. The real professionals deal with solid gold ingots, nowadays. A little extra work to melt them down, sure, but damn hard to tamper with. 

Stacy cranes over Mari and picks up the phone. She tilts her head slightly--as soon as she touches the screen, text appears.

_**CALL** _

Not much room for interpretation, there. Mari already has her burner laptop out. She cables into the phone, stretching over to switch off the signal jammer.

Stacy thumbs _**CALL.**_

Silence.

And then--

_"It is evident you have passed test zero. This was expected."_

A neutral, androgynous voice emerges from the phone. Vocoded, of course. Stacy and Mari glance at each other.

"Then maybe the treasure hunt wasn't necessary," Stacy deadpans. “If this was ‘zero,’ what as the first one? Negative one?” 

_"It is assumed that the monetary reward enclosed is compensation for your efforts."_

Mari holds up ten fingers, waggles them. Stacy shrugs, rolling her eyes. "Tedium can't be compensated."

"So," Mari interjects, "unless this is some new kind of geocaching that all the cool kids are doing, you have an actual job for us."

A pause. _"Correct."_ Another pause. Mari looks down at the tracking algorithm on the screen of her laptop. Strange... _"It is a delicate matter. That is the rationale for test zero. Further pursuit will require... finesse."_

"A little less vagueness would be nice," Stacy scoffs.

 _"This is a matter that is beyond the legal purview of conventional organizations. Your independent enterprise is required."_ A soft pulse of static, almost like breathing. _"Private detectives would not suffice."_

"You just repeated yourself."

_"This matter requires a conspirator and a killer."_

As those words hang in the air, images begin scrolling down the screen of the phone. Of old newspapers--no. Cutouts of obituaries. Who--

 _"Further material will be placed at a dead drop at these coordinates."_ Numbers coalesce upon the screen. _"Afterwards, you are on your own."_

"And our incentive for this is... ?"

_"Ten million USD. Minimum."_

They glance at each other again. 

"Deal," says Mari.

"Sign me up," says Stacy. 

_"It is decided. After downloading the data from this phone, destroy and dispose of it."_

And just like that, the call ends. 

"... Well." Stacy runs a hand over her scalp. Her hair is still matted with sweat. "That was... different, I guess. Any ideas, Mari?"

Mari's eyes flicker across the screen of her laptop. "Not an idea," she murmurs, the glow of pixels shining in her eyes, reflecting portraits of the dead. "A theory."

**Author's Note:**

> _So here it is, unpolished and unrefined as is all my 'work.' I had the idea and I couldn't let it be. Criticism is ever welcome._


End file.
